Wednesday, June 7, 2017

ARMEN HABITAT Are GPEN J/80 Champions!

J/80s sailing regatta (Camaret-sur-Mer, France)- The 16th edition of the Grand Prix Ecole del Navale was marked by light winds and incredibly strong tides.  The weather was beautiful, clear blue skies, and for tacticians amongst the fleet it proved to one of the most challenging GPEN regattas they have experienced in a long, long time.

The regatta took place in Camaret-sur-Mer with 218 participants.  The three-day event took place from May 25th to 28th and included the most popular one-design class in France- the International J/80 class, sailing their second event in the summer-long France J/80 Cup series.

Most of the top J/80 teams from across France were participating in the forty-eight boat class.  Not surprisingly, the team that had been showing top form all spring was Simon Moriceau’s ARMEN HABITAT, posting a 2-1-5-3-1-1 to eclipse their class with just 8 pts net! Simon’s crew included Pierre Loic Berthet, Vincent Guillarm, Paul Medinger, & Julien Bourgeois.  Their arch-nemesis, Eric Brezellec’s COURRIER JUNIOR team (Julie Richeux, Thierry Brezellec, Nicolas Richard, Gideon Kliger) simply could not overcome the pace established by Moriceau’s crew on ARMEN HABITAT.

The highlight of the regatta was the extraordinary performance by top woman skipper Capucine Vitel, driving her VITEL SAILING TEAM to the bronze position on the podium with her crew of Jules Bonnier, Theo Carayon, Mathieu Lays, and Killian Zimmowitch.  Rounding out the top five were Luc Nadal’s talented crew on GAN’JA (Yvonne Goude, David Nadal, Gilles Corcaud) in 4th and Patrick Bot’s team on ECOLE NAVALE CG 29 (Frederic Hauville, Nedeleg Bigi, & Fabrice Morin).  For more J/80 GPEN sailing information Add to Flipboard Magazine.